In 1967 Tahar Ben Jelloun, a peaceful young political protestor, was one of nearly a hundred other hapless men taken into punitive custody by the Moroccan army. It was a time of dangerous importance in Moroccan history, and they were treated with a c...

In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, the four novellas of "Compulsory Happiness" create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of t...